Kamal Essaheb has vivid memories of the freezing day in 2003 when he, his two brothers and their father took a train to New York City’s federal building to join a long line of brown men waiting to be fingerprinted, photographed and asked: “Are you a terrorist?”

Essaheb recalled the fear and confusion on the men’s faces as, one by one, their names were added to a post-9/11 registry for immigrants from 24 Muslim-majority countries and North Korea.

The Essaheb men were placed in deportation proceedings, the beginning of a nightmare that took years and the intervention of advocacy groups to resolve, narrowly sparing them the fate of 13,000 mostly Muslim immigrants who were removed from the United States under the now-defunct program.

Essaheb, who became an immigration attorney after his ordeal, is alarmed that President-elect Donald Trump and his associates have floated the idea of reviving a so-called “Muslim registry,” a tactic he said ripped apart American families, unfairly targeted one religion and failed to result in a single terrorism conviction.

In an interview this week, he cautioned that a new round of fear-driven policies could lead to the same kind of government overreaches that occurred after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

“They went through a whole list of things – they couldn’t go five miles from their homes, they weren’t allowed to use radios, flashlights,” Trump said. “Take a look at what FDR did many years ago, and he’s one of the most highly respected presidents… They named highways after him."

Do no let him doublespeak, misdirect, or talk around the fact that he is advocating for a policy that represents some of the ugliest moments in American and world history and has been slowly but publicly atoned for by presidents of both parties: Ronald Reagan, George HW Bush, and Bill Clinton. This includes the passing of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 to compensate survivors of internment and cruel, race-based policies of the FDR Administration. This is not OK.